dangeraaron10

That's my issue. I prefer being heroic than being really evil and try to go out of my way of doing the super heinous stuff on redside. Unless I'm playing a character is 100% an Arachnos fanboy, I usually go with my old friend Matthew Burke. I wish there was more Matthew Burkes. I like being a thorn in the side of everyone. So during those times I want to play a villain, redside sorta drops the ball on the most satisfying part of being a villain; freedom. Even cleverly wording contract missions to make you feel like you're in control would help. The best part about the Rogue Isles, to me, is Tip Missions and the gradual conversion from Villain to Rogue and either staying Rogue or doing a full Heel-Face Turn. I really need to start running goldside because, as much as I like blueside, I could use some variety. But then, I always liked Emperor Cole and the Loyalists more than Lord Recluse and Arachnos.

I agree. These are positive quality of life changes for MM for all game modes and should go live as soon as possible (assuming they work as intended on the test server). Number shifting can be done later. These have been AI improvements MM players have been asking for since forever back on live and again here on HC, often being told in broadcast it'd be too difficult or impossible because of the game's spaghetti code. That and I really want Mercs to be usable T_T

Has anyone been able to test these changes out with Mercenaries? Does it make them more usable? They're one of my favorite Pet powers which are, sadly, bottom of the barrel on Live.

I'd be all over this. I'd much rather slot one Overwhelming Force and take care of my KB woes than to clog up my slots with Sudden Acceleration. I like the idea of the latter existing for those that want to cherry pick which powers do KB and which do KD.

If I didn't always try to build for concept first, I'd pick Fly every time. "It's the slowest!" I just fly upwards, pick a direction, and grab a drink. Or I might want to do some sightseeing around various zones and Fly helps me do that. I don't have the patience for Teleport and would never use it outside of the one baked into Mystic Flight or for Warshade (and then I stop using Shadow Step immediately upon receiving squid form and just use that for transportation). Same for Super Speed. My Savage/Rad Brute doesn't have wings and his abilities don't let him defy gravity, so he uses a combination of Beast Run and Jump Pack to get around. I'd love a variety of travel powers on my characters if it matched their concept. But there's times I just say screw it and pop a Jet Pack. The Raptor model isn't all that expensive from the P2W vendor, just 5k inf for a half hour of use time (it doesn't tick down when not in use, to my knowledge) Fly was, is, and always will be my favorite travel power. If only because winged heroes are cool and flying is not only superheroic but convenient as hell. Stopping in to signal boost that, yes, I like it.

Yes, to make it clear, the "Playstyle" tab does not have any mechanical influence over any given AT. It's simply a way to filter out different ATs if the player has a particular playstyle in mind. So if you pick "Tank" it'll filter out ATs that don't have much of a tanking ability to speak of. By clicking off of or not selecting anything in "Playstyle" going over to the "Archetype" tab displays all ATs.

I cannot wait to see these changes go live. Can't wait to see how this changes MM gameplay across the various pet powers. Maybe this is my opportunity to make that Bots/Traps character I've been wanting. I might make a couple MMs after these changes!

One type of costume part I appreciated being added to CoH at a certain point was tails not only being separated from belts, but having animated versions of tails that used to be completely static. While I appreciate having them for my monster characters, I wish they were larger as they're hardly noticeable at a distance or in the heat of combat. From what I can tell, there's a great deal of room between the tail's lowest point and a flat surface, and I imagine taking each animated tail and adding a version that was simply scaled up just before it would clip into the ground would be pretty rad. I'm not a programmer or 3D artist myself, but I think it wouldn't be terribly complex to make copies of each animated tail, scale it up evenly in each dimension (to prevent stretching on the textures) for a much more noticeable part of your costume. Using the Animated - Reptile Tail as a baseline, since it would have the least amount of area to get scaled up before clipping into the ground. I guess calling it [Animated - Large [Insert Animal Type] Tail], in this case [Animated - Large Reptile Tail]. Please excuse my terrible ghetto image editing. I feel like this is as large as the tail can get if scaled up evenly without clipping into the ground while running. Clipping with Capes and Trenchcoats is to be expected as the normal tails also clip into Capes and Trenchcoats.

I think Captain Powerhouse mentioned in the Tanker thread that he considered doing just this, when concern was brought up about a possible T1 and T2 power swap in a Tanker's secondary. Notably it would force Fiery Melee Tankers to use a Sword, which I personally feel is very restrictive in character concepts. Putting my stamp of approval on this (though in the end I gave up making Fiery Melee work and instead going with Savage Melee)

Always love looking at your builds. I don't see Build Up in there. Is it not all that useful for a Tanker?

Personally, I'd like to see several choices for Mastermind pet "skins". Thugs seem to randomly change between preset skins on each summon. I wish we could opt to select which skins we want in the Power Customization menu and those pets stick with those skins, and then add more skins. That way you can select from ingame gangs and mobs, and maybe even have girl henchman if you pick Skulls. Same with Robots possibly being replaced by Clockwork or different types of animals for Beasts. This I feel would not be as resource intensive as loading in MM minions with individually selectable costumes but the ability to pick between 5-6 preset skins.

I appreciate it! Not sure what Tanker I'll end up playing but Rad/Fire sounds pretty cool.

Fire Breath is part of the theme, so that one I'm keeping. Also I'm building for a No-Swords character, here. So while Fire Sword Circle is a great ability mechanically, it doesn't fit the concept at all. I understand this isn't ideal, but I build for theme first and then min/max after the fact. One thing I did overlook is Air Superiority, which would be a good idea for someone who generally leans towards Fly/Hover. Thank you. Though I do love and plan to take every power in Radiation Armor. Great resists as well as the team heal and the debuffs.

I'd like to throw out a suggestion for new costume pieces, being larger tails. Even if it's just the current animated ones we have, but just scaled up to be much bigger. I appreciate the ones we have but they're sometimes hard to notice. I'd also like to see more customization to Beast Heads. Would it be too much to ask to have the "Ears" subsection be changed to "Features" that also includes fins and horns?

I'm that guy that tends to love Epic Power Pools in most cases (though some clearly more than others). Having Epic Power Pools be available much sooner would help me realize a lot of character concepts much earlier. Does my Melee character need those Laser Eye Beams? Probably not, but I like having them around. For fun and flavor. Same with a Dominator concept that's a Final Fantasy Black Mage that uses Fire, Ice, and Thunder (Elec Control/Fire Assault/Ice Mastery). It'd be nice to realize the Tri-Element concept earlier in the leveling experience. I like the idea.

Hey all. I've been bouncing around different character concepts and ATs for a while now, not really finding something I genuinely love to play. Lately I've been getting really interested in the recent talks about Tankers, and not only is it fun to not die, I'm interested in how their AoE is going to be improved even further soon. A character concept I've been trying to make work makes use of either Breath of Fire or Fire Breath, which tends to be skipped in almost every Fire build on every AT, except Tanker. Unless I'm mistaken, Breath of Fire will benefit from the AoE increase being tossed around in the Beta servers right now. So this new character concept I have in mind has a few key (non negotiable) thematic powers, being Breath of Fire and Laser Beam Eyes. I'm going for an old-timey Kaiju inspired character. I don't really care for the power effects of Fiery Aura and understand that it trades defense for damage. I like the idea of Radiation Armor having a few AoE attacks while also having some good resistance. Aside from the powers mentioned earlier I'm pretty flexible in terms of Power Pools and specific power choices. Travel power wise, my preference is almost always Flight. I almost always take Hasten in every build as, from what I can tell, every build benefits from it. Taking Fighting is a no-brainer as well, especially for Rad Armor, which can benefit from Weave's +DEF (from what I can tell on Pines, Rad is a primarily Resistance oriented set with little native Defense). I'd love to give a Rad/Fire/Energy Tanker with a Mutation origin a try, so I'm wondering if any Tanker experts have any tips? I like the damage type variety it outputs and its AoE potential without being as frail as Fiery Aura. I'm concerned about the lack of Defense. I'm sure IOs will be pivotal in meeting those softcaps. Edit: To clarify, this build isn't meant specifically for efficient farming, but all-purpose gameplay including solo and team play.

I'll accept that. I guess that's another reason this game is so good. I actually settled on Beam/Energy. Went more "space marine" than "Iron Man". It works pretty good and managing my Disintegration keeps me more engaged, while Energy Aura is a well rounded secondary that's toggle and forget, letting me focus on Beam Rifle's packed kit.

Things get even more dicey if your character is something other than Human. I'm not talking about a shapeshifter, either. Either some sort of monster, fantasy creature, or alien. I imagine various organizations would be keeping uncomfortably close tabs on you at all times. I imagine my alien bounty hunter loiters around on his grounded ship, tweaking his gear and weapons until needed. I mean, good luck being an alien looking for a day job. "Reptilians Need Not Apply" in the window and all that.

That makes a lot of sense, thank you. It's one thing to look at different builds and get some opinions on what might be good or bad but it's another thing entirely to actually know yourself what makes a good build. I imagine to help differentiate CoH from other medieval fantasy MMOs at the time, there's next to no shared terminology. "Inspirations" are essentially consumables or items, and "Enhancements" take the place of equipment or gear, or even "enchantments".

I see. I got nothing, then.

Don't let Paragon City's lawyers find out about that. We'd be out of the job!

I would love if you could interact with the crime levels in places like Atlas and such. No matter how many muggings I stop it seems like every block there's someone about to get assaulted or have a purse stolen. Either having crime rates reduce if more crimes getting stopped, with crimes increasing when ignored, feels like any solo or group of Heroes could make a noticeable impact on visible crime going on. It's nice when phasing technology turns a group of Hellions burning a building down into a group of police apprehending them so it feels like you can finally take a breath and say "My work here is done" and you're not going away knowing that crimes are going on behind your back but you don't have all day fighting a never-ending stream of crimes. No wonder everyone just hangs out by the Atlas statue. Out of sight, out of mind. Crimes aren't happening if I can't see them!

What I mean by "Knocktoward" is that enemies caught in this AoE will fling towards the user as opposed to away from it, basically reversing the direction of Knockbacks. The strength of this Knocktoward would be tied to distance. Farther enemies will be knocked toward further and enemies closer will be knocked toward less, with melee-range enemies being knocked down instead. Though I imagine this would be extremely useful for any Melee AT and I'd certainly be envious of it if I wasn't a Tanker.

I don't really have much of a dog in this fight, but I was wondering if there was anything in the game that functions as a "Knocktoward"? As opposed to a Knockback. If not, I wonder if Tankers could be given a PBAoE "Knocktoward" to act as sort of a AoE Deathgrip using WoW terms. It seems like knockbacks and enemy placement is a huge point of contention for most all levels of team play and if Tankers got an ability that allowed it to clump scattered enemies in on itself it could have some additional utility. If Tankers getting more aggro/defense amounts to nothing since you can't only have good enough defense/aggro control that Brute can achieve, and increasing Tanker damage is a non starter as it will either still fall behind Brute or exceed Brute and make it irrelevant (which is a non-starter since we'd be back to square one in addition to a Tanker/Brute powercreep), I think Tankers could benefit from additional group utility. The Hero ATs seem to focus more on the group and less on the self like Villain ATs. Maybe give a PBAoE Knocktoward to Tanks in each primary or secondary powerset or adjust existing AoE to have that effect. This could be a great qualify of life for Controllers/Dominators and just about anyone that focuses on AoE damage. Thus makes them more desirable in groups. If both Tankers and Brutes can fill the defense/aggro quota (with Tankers just doing it earlier), what would differentiate Tankers from Brutes is that Brutes would have more damage and Tankers would be QoL for the group that would increase everyone's DPS by a fair margin.

Ah, I must have gotten the names mixed up, I meant Hopeling. Thank you for claification. And this is all good info, thank you. I've definitely been over-thinking it. Rad/Rad looks great but definitely needs some investment to make come into its own. I'll have to think on it a bit more, while keeping an eye on this thread for more write-ups to come out.